Rent Split Second (1953)

A Fraught Dawn - Split Second review by CH

“They can get courage from a bottle – but we've got lipstick.”

So says one woman to another in one of the many fraught dark moments which comprise the eighty-minute running time of Split Second (1953). That sounds the stuff of film noir dialogue but this was also the decade of hostage drama (so well caught in the Sinatra of Suddenly) and one in which an unfettered Bomb loomed. All these elements are drawn together in a film directed by Dick Powell who had moved from musical comedy to a noir starring rôle – and he is now so effectively behind the camera as events unfurl in a remote spot where a town has been cleared for another mushroom cloud to reach for the sky as dawn breaks.

What is the need for these Bomb testings? The effect had already been shown in practice.

For all that, at the time, Manny Farber said of the film, “an unusually good performance by Stephen McNally”. He has broken out of gaol, a flight which has landed a comrade with a chest wound: that bullet needs retrieval to fend off a festering death.

One way and another, an unlikely crowd – half-a-dozen others - chances to be fenced in. The very spot upon which the Bomb is likely to render all their immediate preoccupations a tawdry concern, these bright open skies a variant upon an old dark house.

And very good it is too.

What's more, McNally's repeated threat that others should not dare to be “cute” - that is smart - prompts one to look up Jonathon Green and find that this usage dates from eighteenth-century low-life.

Here is a masterpiece.

Noir Goes Nuclear - Split Second review by Count Otto Black

This very unusual film noir puts its characters in an extremely contrived but extraordinarily tense situation: several random people are held hostage in a ghost town by a homicidal maniac who thinks it's the perfect hideout because who would look for him in a place which will shortly be destroyed by an atom bomb? Obviously he plans to leave before the explosion. Unfortunately his best buddy is too badly hurt to travel, and the clock is ticking...

Dick Powell, an actor well versed in film noir, tries his hand at directing for the first time, and it has to be said that he's not the best director in the world. The pacing is rather flat, with too many scenes in which people point out, not unreasonably, that they really ought to be thinking about not sticking around too long, what with the atom bomb and all, but not doing an awful lot about it until suddenly it's very urgent indeed. And given the small size of the main cast, I don't see why one of them, the tactfully named "Dummy", has to be a complete nonentity who can't even speak, and is implied to be retarded. What's more, the hero doesn't really make much of an impression, or accomplish all that much other than winning the heart of the pretty girl in the pointy fifties bra.

Stephen McNally steals the film hands down as the mentally damaged combat veteran who causes all the trouble, and is partially redeemed by his loyalty to his best friend, but otherwise he's so unlikeable that it's impossible to care about him. The supporting cast are a lot more interesting, since their motives are far more of a grey area, and they almost make it work. But ultimately it's very hit-and-miss, and the sheer absurdity of the villain deliberately concealing himself right next to an atomic bomb which he knows will presently go off is hard to ignore. Also, would the US Army really have left a nuclear weapon unguarded in the middle of the desert for an entire day? Then again, it's so peculiar that I kind of liked it. It's not a great movie, or in any way comparable to the ultimate nuclear film noir, "Kiss Me Deadly", but it's a fascinating oddity. And, for its time, the ending packs a real punch.